2 ⭐️ this book was a struggle to read. Seeing all the highly rated reviews it makes me wonder if it's just me who didn't like the book.

The book wording choice was annoying to me. Chicks, scaly green ass. Just unnecessary and annoying. Aside from that the book was really hard to get into. The writing didn't flow for me with all the descriptive "crack" "crash" "chomp."

The premise of the book had some hope, a dragon looking for his true love. But it was about finding a mate to mate with in high school.......
Gork has to find a mate, and go off to conquer a planet and hatch eggs. The way the book was written was very stereotypical high school cliques in a dragon world. There was nothing fresh or interesting about the plot after that.

I think the book would've appealed more if it had been written better. But to each their own, some people may really love it. It just wasn't for me.

This ebook was given to me by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this book although it took a while for me to get into it. It's a fun story about a young dragon graduating from school and trying to find his queen or life partner. He's a more emotional dragon, not a quality appreciated by the dragon community, and he's trying to find his inner tougher dragon. The farther I got into the book, the more I enjoyed it. I would recommend this book for all ages.

It really is lovely to read a bit of silly nonsense every once in a while and this certainly hits the spot. I really enjoyed Gork's adventures. Hilarious and heartfelt and a little bit of romance too. Recommended.

I want to say this is the best book ever but its probably just the best book of the year and the best book for me right now. So refresingly original.

The concept of this book sounds amazing, but the execution is lacking. The end result is a sloppy mash-up of genre and voice that can't decide if it's for young kids, teens, or adults. Overall the voice seems like that of a stereotypical 80's 14 year old boy, and while I"m sure that has it's fans, it got old fast.

Oh man, oh man, oh man. Did I ever want to like this book, because dragons. Dragons! And everyone kept mentioning how funny the book is! I love funny books, especially ones that make me laugh out loud!

Yeah, about that.

See, I appreciate the amount of world-building Hudson created, because the world is pretty creative. From the basic concept of space (and time!) travelling dragons set on conquering worlds to the hierarchy of rankings amongst the students (organic and metallic), there is some good stuff for sci-fi and fantasy fans. Too bad it's buried under pages and pages and pages of this Queen Quest. You see the only way dragons can graduate WarWings Academy is to find a mate of the opposite sex; otherwise they become slaves. And even if I'm willing to overlook the heteronormativity of such a premise, the parts of the book dealing with Gork and his interest in Runcita reads like the worst '90s dude-bro/American Pie style movie. The very, very, very little we get of Runcita herself in a speaking role made me like her, but oh my god, everyone surrounding her coupled with Gork's incredibly shallow interest in her just made me disgusted with the whole shebang.

Also, I get the idea of Hudson writing from a teenage perspective (admittedly one with wings that breathes fire), but dear lord the stream of consciousness is bad in this one. Random tangent after random tangent after random tangent, and I normally like stream of consciousness books! But midway through this book and I wanted to cut up all the sections and rearrange them into something less spastic.

I really, really, really wanted to like this book. The ending is sweet, although the message gets a little lost in the noise, and I'm glad Gork's Queen Quest turns out the way it does. And Fribby was interesting and different. It's just the bad drowns out the good in this. And that makes this dragon fan really sad.

No. No. No.

It professes to be aimed at teens but the novel (language, characters and plot) is so clunky and stilted that my older students wouldn't make it beyond the first chapter. The whole premise is about a teenage dragon trying to get laid for the first time. Sure, other teenage books have similar plot devices but in this case it was all consuming and I wasn't at all invested in his success.

I considered its appropriateness for younger readers but dismissed this notion pretty quickly and not just because of the lead dragon's desire to bonk. The swearing is so frequent, all impact is lost: "bastard" is used over 100 times and it's coupled with "sonuvabitch" and "bloody". I don't even want to discuss the reference to "nipples" which are "perky and hard," the protagonist's "mating magnetism" which is "ThrobbingWetOvoWomb" or his love interest's "mating dance" with its "luscious oily odor" and "potent raw... musk." It often felt like badly written dragon porn aimed to send a "delirious bolt of lust through [the] haunches" of Pro-Trump supporters ("Grab the chick whose tail is thick.")

As I mentioned, the language is terrible and I don't just mean the swearing. It feels like the hybrid love child of a mediocre comic and an eleven year old's creative writing homework. A random sample of 20 sentences yielded:

* now x 6;
* and x 18;
* so x 4;
* then x 3.

Actually, I couldn't help it. I've just asked my Kindle to count how many times the word "now" was peppered throughout the novel. Drumroll...

912.

Now that's excessive. Ba-da-boom.

Of all the books I've reviewed, this is bottom of the pile. Usually, I can at least respect the author's craft or effort or concept but this time I'm at a loss.

Warning: do not use as a class text; you have parental complaints.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

Gork is just about to graduate from WarWings Academy, and he needs a female dragon to agree to be his queen (mate with him and fly to another plant to conquer it) to avoid becoming a slave. Unfortunately for Gork, he is just about the antithesis of what a “good” dragon should be – his horns are too short; his heart is too big; he often faints, and he just isn't nasty enough. Nevertheless, all he can think about is getting Runcita to be his queen.

I feel like the story had potential but fell short of what it could have been. There were some neat concepts in the world the author built, but there were also a lot of loose ends. The plot was also really out there for the last 20% of the book. Nevertheless, I kept wondering what would happen next and when Gork would open his eyes and realize what seemed obvious to me right away (that Fribby was the one for him)!

August 01, 2017
REVIEW: GORK, THE TEENAGE DRAGON BY GABE HUDSON

Gork, the Teenage Dragon by Gabe Hudson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“There’s no arguing with the heart, because the heart is the highest law there is. No matter if that heart is twisted and tiny and evil, or if the heart is hideously deformed and huge and sensitive.”



Therein lies the biggest problem for Gork the Teenage Dragon. “My jumbo-sized heart is guiding my scaly ass through the madness.” You see, on Blegwethia, home planet to the dragon species, the smaller your heart, the more evil you are. And the more evil and scary a dragon you are, the more planets you will conquer, the more species you will enslave, and the more successful and famous a dragon you will be. Gork is neither evil nor scary (though his surname is Terrible, his middle name being The) and comes from a line of reputable dragons, including the insidious Dr. Terrible, his grandfather.

Despite weekly private lessons with the mad scientist Dr. Terrible, Gork is at the bottom of his class at WarWings Academy, the elite school for young dragons. Gork’s whole story is told throughout the events of Crown Day – the most important day of a young dragon’s life, where he must chose a mate to be his Queen. If she accepts, they will both be assigned a foreign planet to lay eggs on and conquer. If she rejects him, he will be forever a slave to another dragon forever. So yeah, it’s pretty much just like the human high school experience, emotionally speaking. Gork navigates this day with his best friend Fribby, a menacing robot dragon, and his organic spaceship, ATHENOS II, defeating bullies, nefarious professors, and more.

Gork The Teenage Dragon is by far one of the most unique books I have ever read. I guarantee you have never read anything quite like this quirky, yet oddly profound novel. It is all told from Gork’s perspective throughout a single day, and is told in present tense, with flashbacks to both his youth (he was born on Planet Earth, and has a lot to say about man-creature’s perceptions of dragons) as well as his time at WarWings leading up to the all-important Crown Day. The way the story is told keeps the reader right inside the action. And there is a lot of action. Poor Gork just wants to ask his crush Runcita to Harvest Fest and for her to be his Queen, but he has to fight off a hoard of enemies just to get to her. He barely has a moment to rest, and the non-stop fighting and action managed to keep me engaged.

In fact,Gork is so full of action, and as a result, full of blood and gore, that I am a bit baffled as to why this book is marketed as for children. “[He] never even knew what hit him. I’m guessing the whole experience was kind of painless. He smashes into the far wall of the gym and explodes in a gush of blood. [He] is simply no more. It’s pretty repulsive.” Okay, yes, this is a book about dragons, and some of them are robots, not fully living creatures, but repulsive, indeed. I am not one to be easily grossed out, but I couldn’t help but think of how it would be viewed differently if this book was about humans being torn to pieces (which, ultimately, because we the readers are humans, it is).




The book is also damn funny. If I see a book that is advertised as “laugh-out-loud funny”, I stay the hell away from it. Because they are usually is not funny at all. (I admit I have a strange sense of humor, but still.) But Gork had me giggling, or at least smiling, every few pages or so. Reading on the couch with my boyfriend, I would start chuckling and force him to listen to me to read sections out loud (he loves it). One of my favorite parts were the ridiculously long and descriptive chapter titles, like: “Now Let Me Get Back To The Main Story I Was Telling You About, In Terms Of How This Robot Trenx Is Saying That Dr. Terrible Just Gave Him A New Spaceship Called ATHENOS III”. Oh Gork, you are so easily distracted and awkward, just like me. He also loved to hate on himself, which was sometimes sad, always relatable, but usually hilarious: “I mean you know you’re in bad shape when you’ve got a headless Mutant feeling sorry for you.”

However, the reason I loved this book so much was because of how much hidden depth it had…if you looked hard enough. Sure, you could read this book in a day and take it as an action-packed tale of nasty dragons that shoot firestreams and live in outer space, but there are alsomany lessons to take away. (I also have an entire theory on how almost all of the characters are the Harry Potter characters in a different dimension, which you can message me about if you want to get really geeky. I wish I were joking.)

First, let’s take a look at one of the book’s villians: Dean Floop, Principal of WarWings Academy, father of Gork’s queen-t0-be Runcita, and consequently Gork’s mortal enemy. But if you’re paying attention, he is much more than that. Dean Floop has a reputation for being “firestream-happy” , as in, he likes to publicly execute his students and fellow faculty. Which isn’t that unusual for WarWings, where only the strongest students survive…I mean, these dragons are ruthless. Propose to a dragoness that’s more powerful than you and she burn you to a crisp. But the reasons behind Floop’s killing sprees are terrifying, because they seem to echo our own world more than just coincidentally. Without over-complicating or spoiling anything, Floop basically starts killing off journalist dragons who have uncovered the truth, followed by militant dictatorship actions like media blackouts and no-fly zones. Any of this sound familiar?! It’s unclear whether Hudson intended these parallels to our world or not, but they were impossible for me to not pick up.

There is also some possible commentary on species elitism. This I might not have picked up on if I hadn’t listened to Gabe Hudson read The Frog Prince by Robert Coover on The New Yorker Fiction Podcast (highly recommended, obviously). Summed up, it’s a short story about a frog that becomes a human, but really just prefers to be a frog in the mud after he realizes being human isn’t all that great. After the reading, Hudson discussed with the host about how humans always see themselves as the best species on the planet. The dragons on Blegwethia definitely share this viewpoint; humans exist in this story but are viewed as pathetic creatures waiting to be conquered and enslaved by dragons. This passage in particular sums up how dragons feel about us:

“Recently there’ve been rumors around WarWings that some of the dragon professors […] have discovered a way to clone humans. […] Honestly, I don’t think any of us dragons care one way or the other about the prospect of bringing the man-creature species back […] Though I hear they might make good pets.”

Again, not sure if this was Hudon’s intention, but I definitely saw the story of Gork as a bit of a commentary on pride as a species, and perhaps even nationalism. (Don’t get me started on the DataHaters – the group of blatant racists who constantly hate on the robot dragons.) Though as with every book, it goes as deep as the reader allows.

Gork is a character I will never forget. I never would have guessed that a goofy dragon, his robot best friend Fribby, and his motherly, organic spaceship would impact me so much. I admit that I might have gotten a bit teary during ATHENOS’s speech at the end. Like every good epic tale, there are morals and lessons to be taken out of this bizarre tale:


“The hero and the coward both feel afraid. It’s the hero whose actions are different.”


--

“Your weakness is your strength […] and your weakness is where you can find your greatest power.”

--

“’What about this big stupid heart of mine? And the crying? And the fainting? Fribby, I’m a mess.’
‘It takes courage to be so real. You’re not like these other fools running around here. You’re different.’”


And thank you, Mr. Hudson, for reminding me that it’s still okay to be different, and to have an extremely over-sized heart.





~~~~~~

HUGE thank you to Dani T. at Knopf, who reached out to me and sent me an e-arc of Gork via NetGalley. This has not impacted my review in any way.
Please note that all quotes are from an advanced copy and may not be in the final version.

Sci Fi, Fantasy, Teen and YA are just a few of the genres I read on a regular basis. When I came across Gork, the Teenage Dragon by Gabe Hudson at Netgalley, I decided to read it. I picked it up in late June and just finished it last night, just over a month later. I think it would appeal to a different type of reader than myself.

I found the first chapter to be the most enjoyable. Gork, the title character and narrator, complains about how humans how defamed dragons. He even names a few examples like Beowulf and The Hobbit. It is a very funny take from the dragon point of view. The rest of the book did not do as much for me. Again, I believe I am probably not the ideal audience. If you have a young person, teen or YA, in your family, you should check Gork, the Teenage Dragon out. As with all books for those age groups, I strongly suggest parents read the book first before handing it over to their younger family members. That is not a comment on Gork in particular but just a good practice for all parents to do. Besides the the value of pre reading for any content issues, there is a true joy to sharing books with your children, whatever their age may be.

[Disclaimer: I received a free e-copy of this book from NetGalley for review purposes.]

DNF at 24%, and that was a lot further than I wanted to read. I quit at chapter 11, where we get yet another diversion from the already belabored story with, "Let me quickly tell you why Dean Floop hates my grandpa Dr. Terrible so much." No thanks. Your idea of "quickly" is taking 7 chapters to get the main character and his love interest within spitting distance, when it probably only took 10 minutes in the grand scheme of things.

There was a lot of "Yes sir" and not in the agreeing way, but in the "Yessiree Bob" kind of way. Also, "scaly green ass" comes out every couple of paragraphs, Runcita is "luscious" and "juicy," with big boobs (apparently dragons have giant boobs? I can't picture these damn creatures at all), and that's it. "But I'm thinking: [Thought 1]. But I'm also thinking: [Opposite or unrelated Thought 2]." So much repetition. So much dragging out of the story with information that could be introduced NOT in the middle of an action scene.

I expected this to be funny, but instead it was irritating and repetitive, info-dumps at the completely wrong time, and frankly I couldn't read another sentence. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me read, but it's a dud for me.

*I would firstly like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC of this in exchange for an honest review.*

I don't have a WHOLE lot to say about this book, except it kind of bored me. It did (finally) get interesting for me around 78% of the way through the book, but that is just too much to read without feeling invested. The writing felt clipped, repetitive, and childish. However, this book is obviously not intended for children as it makes many adult references.

This book follows Gork on Crown Day, where he has to choose a Queen to lay his eggs and be his co-conqueror of other planets. He spends about 65% of the book just trying to get to Runcita (aka the one he desires). Even though, you and I both know that he isn't meant for Runcita. A few times I laughed, but it was pretty early on. I had high hopes for humor. I thought this was going to be an entertaining book about dragons or even about the daily goings on of dragons. (Come on, there is SO much to work with here.) Sadly, it just ended up being a dragon boy obsessed with a dragon girl overlooking the right dragon girl and being neglected by his dragon overlord grandfather (who also wants to eat him). Problematic? Yes. Yes, that is me sitting in a corner reflecting on how a book made DRAGONS seem boring. I am a disappointed puddle. A pile of disappoint.

As for the repetitiveness, here are the number of times the following phrases are found in the 400 pages of this book:

Scaly Green Ass(es): 55
Terrible: 429 (WHAT EVEN)
Will to Power: 68
Runcita: 272
Luscious: 40

As you can see, this didn't take me to my happy place of imagination. It more or less took me to a sad place of frustration. If anyone needs me, I will be wallowing.

6255153
Piper Gottschalk's review Jul 30, 2017 · edit
liked it
bookshelves: reviewed

Thanks to the publisher and Net Galley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book. This is my honest opinion.

There were a lot of things I liked about this book. It was filled with very unique takes on Dragons and their lore. It was fantasy of course, but also very sci fi. The book is presented as a book written by the main character, the teenage dragon. It did sound like something a teenagers voice. Well done.

I just wish it were tightened up much more. It was quite a bit longer than I felt it needed to be. Especially for the YA audience this is targeting. It may stop some from reading it. Also, there were certain lines that were repeated a little too often. Makes sense as many teens do this, but in written form it was too much. Got a little annoying.

That said, I would recommend this to fans of dragons and Sci/fantasy. Especially teens.

Gork is running out of time to find his mate or be doomed to a lifetime of slavery. In the meantime, he's got to contend with a power-hungry, crazy uncle and murderous peers. You know, typical teenager stuff.

I thought this was a fun novel, and a unique take on dragon mythology. The pacing was great, and I think teens will enjoy the narrative voice of Gork. :)

It's funny. It's entertaining. Did I totally love it? Not really. I think I need a better imagination to totally get this one. So dragons I get, in theory, except not too sure how they don't set fire to themselves. But there is a lot of weird ass shit in this book that my brain didn't really like. Like swapping the brain of a lion for a worm. Really? And I get the concept that a dragon might be able to grow a new tail or new horns, but an entire foot? Or a wing? That just seems improbable. Of course I had no problem with nanobots, so I'm sort of all over the place with this. If you just accept this book the way that it is, it's quite funny. I'm going with that.

Well my only problem with this book is that I kept reading Gork's name as Grok for some reason. But that's my problem, not the book's. This was a fun, unique, and well placed story. I thought this would be an enjoyable read and am so glad i was not wrong.

This review is in exchange for a free e-galley from netgalley.com.

I feel like this book must be for someone, but I don't think that someone was me. I adore books about dragons, I love space, robots are awesome, and I read a lot of fantasy. On paper, this book should have been perfect.

The writing style is very conversational and that conversation is being led by a teenage boy. I imagine this could be very appealing to a specific audience that can relate to that type of dialogue. There is a lot of repetition, story time-skips, and so much emphasis on all the luscious lady dragons that the narrator wants for his Queen. I'm not a teenage boy, so most of the thought process happening for the narrator felt immature and annoying, but I realize that might work for some people!

Some things I enjoyed:
The world felt very fleshed out and like there was so much more potential for learning more.
I felt like the overall message and moral was lovely (despite also being pretty unsubtly telegraphed)

Silly and childish story, plot and characters. Think this would be better as a much shorter children's book. Lost interest and quit about half way thru.

Sorry, you lost me on page 4 when the author (Gabe Hudson) referred to J. R. R. Tolkien as a nutjob. I understand that Gork, the narrator, is supposed to be a teenager, but his immaturity (as evidenced by actions and language choice) was unappealing. Other reviewers have called GORK, THE TEENAGE DRAGON “strange,” “madcap,” “quirky,” “bizarre,” and “funny.” Sounds like if you are a Douglas Adams fan, this might be for you.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this book, but unfortunately this it was not my cup of tea. I normally like fantasy stories, but this one failed to really interest me past the 20% mark. Perhaps the whole dragons in space thing was a little too much for me.

Pretty cover though.